Joshua Forrest Russell

Emotional Hydrology

With the cold weather comes emotional instability. The feeling that I’m slowly drowning internally. I always wonder why that is? I actually like the snow, I find it beautiful and as a kid I think the winter months were something I was always excited about. The holidays were around the corner and that meant being able to see my family members and loved ones all in one place. However, the older I get the more that feeling of joy becomes a memory, something I’ll always cherish but will now rarely experience. For me, this is most likely due to unfortunate events occurring around this time of year. People tend to get sick and like spring with new life winter sadly tends to invite death and sickness into our homes. I don’t have a very close nit family, and it seems like over the years those connections have faded out of importance or just disappeared entirely. My grandparents were in a way the spider’s web which kept us all connected (whether we wanted to be or not), now that they’re no longer with us it’s made it a lot more difficult to keep those ties strong. People tend to focus most of their time on the people directly in front of them, myself included and because my family lives all across different parts of Canada it’s difficult to have that close friendship I wish we could all have. That being said, anyone who’s related to me will always have my support no matter what and I know for the most part that would be echoed back to me. Luckily most of the friends I made growing up have stayed in the city, so whenever I visit home I have them to lean on for support. They’re all family to me and I think for the longest time I wasn’t thankful enough for the amount of friendships I’ve kept going. Were not a huge group but we’ve all been friends for over a decade and that’s a rare thing to have. The only thing is that just like my family, I fear that eventually these friendships will suffer from the exposure of time as well. The idea that I will be completely alone seeps deeply into my mind. This drawing was a way to vent my frustrations with my emotional state during this season and to kind of help myself understand better why I’m upset. To try and push those unneeded feelings out. So I decided to mix the coldness and loneliness I feel presently with a happy memory which comes with the later change of season. As a kid I would make little paper boats and float them down the runoffs from the snowbanks melting in the spring. I’d follow them till the gutter and then repeat. Not all of them made it and some of them went over the falls but it was a simple thing that kept me entertained and made me laugh.